JESSI WILLIAMS & COYOTE

Client Biography

Born and raised surrounded by cornfields in
southern Indiana, COYOTE’s songwriter
and rhythm guitarist, Jessi Williams,
is no stranger to country and bluegrass music as evident in their debut single “Roam, Little Gypsy, Roam.” Set to a lulling
piano and twangy guitar, the moody waltz--penned by Williams for her fellow country songstress, and friend, Margo Price--“Roam, Little Gypsy, Roam” exudes biting
lyrics examining the pressures and expectations faced when transitioning from a
young, free-spirited woman to a wife and mother. The song kicks off Jessi Williams & Coyote’s debut
six-song, self-titled EP due August 24.

“When I lived in Nashville, Margo and I would
frequently get together to drink, smoke, and play Nirvana or Dylan songs in her
basement,” says Williams.“We were a little wild back then, so these
nights felt pretty responsible to us. When I got pregnant and moved to Kansas,
my life was strikingly different than the life I'd been living. Margo wrote a
song for me called ‘The Ballad of Jessi Williams.’ I remember it had a great
line about trading cigarettes for apron strings. When Margo got married and
subsequently pregnant with her boys a few years later, I wrote ‘Roam, Little Gypsy,
Roam’ as a response song. She's heard it and is really supportive of this
release.”

At 14, Williams
hid in her bedroom studying the Neil Young guitar songbook, while her parents
hosted regular “pickin’ parties” in her old farmhouse kitchen. While, at the
time, her interest in the bluegrass genre may have taken a backseat to her love
of 60s,70s rock and Motown, it has always been a prominent style in her
songwriting.

In 2008 Jessi
moved to Los Angeles with her two-year-old
daughter while her, now ex, husband was fighting in the Iraq war. As an outlet
for her frustrations as a military wife and single mom, Jessi flooded her notebooks with stories of personal woe and
folkloric interpretations of the world. She brought forth imagery where words
seemed to fall short. Guitar in hand, she took to the stages of dive bars and
coffee shops where she met Chris Sousa
(bass), Robin Harris (guitar),
former memberAdrian
Prohaska (mandolin), and Conan Skyrme
(drums). Through their mutual adoration of folk music, the 5-piece folk rock band known as “Coyote” (pronounced Kye-Oat) was born.

When
it came time to put the stories she was writing to melody and chords, “it was during
an extremely transitional time,” says Williams.
“I had just moved to California and
gotten a place of my own after the divorce. Traveling came up in my writing as
a sort of figurative ‘moving forward with ones life’ and is apparent throughout
this EP. Naturally there is content about relationships not working out and the
difficulty to stop dwelling on the past. In my new home I often thought about
who had lived there before me and what their life was like. ‘What happiness or
sadness had they left behind there?’ I realized that we leave something with
everyone we meet, everywhere we go, and everything we touch. I write a lot
about ghosts and hauntings as a physical manifestation of this more emotional
experience.”

Those
thoughts can be heard in “Bloodhound,”
the freight train tempoed song Jessi
penned about a few obsessions of hers: ghosts, shape-shifters and the
animal/spiritual duality of human beings. Another, the infectiously hook-filled
“Hard to Tell” that boasts a story about
the uncertainty of loyalty with Skyrme’s
shuffle beat and closes with fretboard fire from Harris on electric guitar—all packed into just over two minutes.

Eventually, Coyote
found themselves in the live room of the historic East West Studios- home of
The Beach Boys Pet Sounds. There, they laid down eight tracks and
prepared for their first release. However, around the same time, Jessi was touring with
spaghetti-western influenced folk rock band, The Lonely Wild. Balancing a
demanding tour schedule, a day job, motherhood, spread her too thin and she was
forced to put Coyote on a hiatus.

All the while the songs still came….

Now reemerging in 2018 as Jessi Williams and
Coyote, the group, with The Lonely Wild member Ryan Ross joining, have new songs in the works and are blowing the
dust off of tunes that, like a bottle of wine--and all good old country songs--have
ripened beautifully with age. “I hope The Lonely Wild fans will enjoy a
closer look into this aspect of my personality, adds Williams.“Bluegrass and
folk music are part of my roots and will always influence my music in some way.
For anyone who may not be familiar with my work, I hope they feel some sort of
catharsis. I hope the lyrics speak to them in some way. If I can evoke any sort
of emotion, whether it be anger, joy or sadness, then the words have served
their purpose. If they want to dance, sing along then the music has served its
purpose.”

Jessi
Williams & Coyote’s debut EP arrives August 24.

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Press Releases

07.02.18

JESSI WILLIAMS & COYOTE Team with The Bluegrass Situation to Premiere “Bloodhound”